In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

OCCIDENTALISM AND ALTERITY: NATIVE SELF AND FOREIGN OTHER IN CHEN YINGZHEN AND SHUSAKU ENDO* Lucien Miller University of Massachusetts, Amherst I n t r o d u c t io n In this paper, I should like to borrow Edward Said's concept of "Orientalism" and stand it on its head, as it were, by investigating "Occidentalism". (Said, 1978, 1985). I propose to explore East Asian representations of the "West", primarily in stories by Chen Yingzhen that have Western protagonists and in comparable works by the Japanese writer, Shusaku Endo, with some attention given to Chen Yingzhen's non-fiction and social criticism. My avenue to Occidentalism shall be through "alterity" or "otherness", for an understanding of alterity seems to provide the best means of comprehending the dialogical relation between native self and foreign other that both writers privilege in various works. I am especially interested in how alterity relates to questions about cross-cultural understanding, the efficacy of cross-cultural criticism, and whether self and other can know one another through the operation of the dialectical imagination envisioned by Mikhail Bakhtin (Bakhtin, 1984, Todorov, 1984). O t h e r n e s s in S h u s a k u E n d o I will begin by noting the native-self/foreign-other relation in four of Shusaku Endo's short stories, because the vivid contrast between the Japanese writer's perspective and that of Chen Yingzben highlights important intra-Asian differences regarding Occidentalism and alterity. Shusaku Endo' s "Despicable Bastard", "Fuda-no- Tsuji", "Mothers", and "Old Friends" foreground otherness through the figure of the leper, the martyr, the apostate, and the missionary. In "Despicable Bastard", a Japanese student, Egi, faces otherness when he is coerced into visiting a leper colony with some Christian students from his dormitory. During a baseball game, Egi is caught running between first and second base, and he discovers that he is terrified that he might be touched by a leper. Later, when he is alone, he realizes that CHINOPERL Papers No. 20-22 (1997-99)©1999 by the Conference on Oral and Performing Literature, Inc. CHINOPERL Papers No. 20-22 he cannot overcome his fear of having to face physical pain: "I'll probably go on betraying my own soul, betraying love, betraying others. I'm a good-fornothing , a wretch ... a base, cowardly, vile, despicable bastard" (Gessel 1984a, 42). Egi is unable to change, despite the breakthrough in self-awareness that comes about through his encounter with the diseased other. In many of Endo 's stories, there is a painful awareness of atrocities committed by the Japanese military during World War II and in the seventeenth century against Japanese and foreign Christians. "Fuda-no- Tsuji" juxtaposes these atrocities by telling the story of a reunion of middle-aged men who had attended a Catholic college together during the war years. On the way to the reunion, one man reminisces about Mouse, a foreign Christian brother, who always wore a fearful, timorous look. The man recalls identifying with Mouse because both of them were physical and moral cowards. Egi was even terrified by the sight of blood. One day, after hearing the story of the Japanese Christian martyrs, Mouse insisted on seeing the execution ground, Fuda-no- Tsuji. Mouse disappeared from the school during the war, and at the reunion, the man learns that Mouse had returned to Germany, where he was interred at Dachau because of his Jewish ancestry. The friends at the reunion speculate that Mouse was the monk who had volunteered to take the place of a Jew sentenced to die by starvation at Dachau. As the man returns home on a train, he passes Fuda-no- Tsuji, which he likens to Dachau, and meditates on those sitting around him: "All these passengers, like the man himself, surely led faded lives of cowardice and would be buried cowards ... ". But, recalling his surprise at the discovery that Mouse was so completely other, he thinks: "Somewhere in this crowd ... was Mouse" (Gessel, 1984b, 68-69). Otherness, as in "Despicable Bastards", is alienating. The foreign other with whom the native self identifies is utterly exterior and unfamiliar, and its complete...

pdf